I want to meet the hidden genius in the White House

Plus, bribery and perfidy go together in Venezuela

Many people did not like Gen. Douglas McArthur. This includes Dwight Eisenhower, who at one time worked for McArthur, and President Harry Truman. Even those who didn’t personally like McArthur respected him greatly. There was literally nobody more qualified to run the post-war far-east as a quasi-regent of the United States, than McArthur, a bona fide expert on the region and its culture, who spent decades of his life living there. I am not going to get all nerdy on the history, but I am starting here to put some background color to what might end up as a Jackson Pollock painting in this post—meaning I’m going to throw some paint and see what sticks.

Image: ChatGPT and Public Domain, White House, 2018

But first, let me get the throat-clearing out of the way. President Donald Trump accepted Maria Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize, which she willingly handed to him. The medal: she handed him the gold medal, because the “prize” itself is non-transferrable. The Nobel committee doesn’t really care what laureates do with the gold medal.

The #NobelPeacePrize medal.

It measures 6.6 cm in diameter, weighs 196 grams and is struck in gold. On its face, a portrait of Alfred Nobel and on its reverse, three naked men holding around each other’s shoulders as a sign of brotherhood. A design unchanged for 120 years.

Did you know that some Nobel Peace Prize medals have been passed on after the award was given? A well‑known case is Dmitry Muratov’s medal, which was auctioned for over USD 100 million to support refugees from the war in Ukraine.

And the medal displayed at the Nobel Peace Center is actually on loan and originally belonged to Christian Lous Lange, Norway’s first Peace Prize laureate.

But one truth remains. As the Norwegian Nobel Committee states: “Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others. The decision is final and stands for all time.”

A medal can change owners, but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot.

Trump is keeping the medal. It reminds me of the time New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2005. Putin asked Kraft if he could hold the Super Bowl ring, and Kraft handed it over. Putin admired it, put it in his pocket, and walked out of the room. Kraft explained later:

“I showed the president my most recent Super Bowl ring,” Kraft said in a statement. The Russian president “was clearly taken with its uniqueness,” Kraft said.

“At that point, I decided to give him the ring as a symbol of the respect and admiration that I have for the Russian people and the leadership of President Putin,” Kraft said.

That’s not what happened, which everyone knows. Putin kept the ring because he wanted it and what could Kraft have done? Donald Trump wanted a Nobel Peace Prize, and the Nobel committee would never, ever, give him one. Barack Obama has one and he would never, ever share it with Trump. So Trump got his prize the same way Putin got the Super Bowl ring. Putin didn’t own a team that won the Super Bowl, and Trump is not a Nobel laureate, but they both have their trinkets, which will have to do.

(As an aside, Donald Trump has also always wanted to own an NFL team. The owners, who get to decide who to allow into the club, have always denied that privilege to Trump, even in the 1980s before he actualized his lust for power. Trump spent years and a fortune of other people’s money beating the NFL in court, but destroying the USFL in the process. But who knows, one day Trump might also have a Super Bowl ring, if he doesn’t already. I haven’t bothered checking.)

Getting a Nobel medal from a laureate whom Trump has the power to pretty much put in office in Venezuela, is the closest thing akin to a naked bribe imaginable, other than a bag of cash in exchange for a federal pardon. The strange thing about it is that the right thing to do is to allow Maria Corina Machado to be president of Venezuela, since she legitimately won the election before Nicolás Maduro stole it. Taking the bribe is the more morally pure path than the one Trump is pursuing, which is to use other people’s money (oil company shareholders) to juice Venezuela’s oil production, then skim the profits, leaving the corrupt socialist Delcy Rodriguez in power.

And another thing. The U.S. reportedly used military craft painted in civilian colors to execute strikes on suspected drug boats off the coast of Venezuela. If you want to geek out on this topic, feel free to read this deep dive by The War Zone blog. If the reports are true, this could be a war crime called “perfidy.” The International Committee for the Red Cross’ International Humanitarian Law Database describes it as “acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence.” Disguising a military mission as a civilian flight probably falls under this prohibition.

So it’s perfidy and bribery.

There’s still time for our government to do the right thing in Venezuela, given the geopolitical forces at play. And that segues into the main topic at hand. A little bit of superhero-level military grade whoop-ass can be applied to effect big changes on a geopolitical scale, if—if—you happen to have a super genius telling you exactly where, when, and how to apply such force.

The raid on Caracas that took Maduro and his wife was, if what Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt retweeted is to be believed, used such advanced technology as to appear otherworldly. The U.S. military appeared to the Cubans and others defending Maduro like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mercenaries to the jungle terrorists in the movie Predator (or, how those elite mercenaries saw the predator alien). We were unbeatable.

That has to be top of mind for the ayatollahs and other regime leaders in Iran. If the U.S. military shows up, it’s game over. President Trump promised the Iranian protesters, who marched in the streets by the millions for days, that America is coming to their rescue. He told the regime that if they began shooting protesters, that there would be consequences. The Iranian regime has killed, by some estimates, 20,000 protesters. And, as I wrote earlier, Trump has sent mixed messages about dealing with the regime.

What we do know is that there has been no raid, no bombing, no military action at all. We spun up our great machine, and then, nothing. There are two explanations that can apply here. One, that there never was an intention of getting us involved in the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, because it would be messy and risky, and that the regime as it stands can offer more to Trump than whoever replaces it. The other is that there was a real plan to strike, but it is either canceled or delayed for some reason.

It’s the second explanation and its reason I want to explore. I’ve seen this posted online in more than one place, by different people, but I want to share this one, because it seems better written and a fuller explanation than the others. I am sharing it in full for you to read.

This is a live containment operation.

The strike was real. The reversal was real.

This is state-level controlled ignition.

There was a greenlight. Then a high-level override.
Carrier strike groups moved. Bombers were armed.
Evacuation flights were ordered, then stood down.
Chalk orders were issued. Logs show “mission called off.”
The clock was ticking and the clock stopped.

Why?

Because something broke the symmetry.

Trump went on camera. Iran halted executions.
A backchannel was opened via Pakistan.
Regional actors like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar intervened to prevent use of airspace.
A UN Security Council session was triggered mid-crisis.
The airspace closure, the rerouted commercial flights, the military standby - all of it was real.
The response was not symbolic. It was surgical.

The deterrent message was delivered with maximum ambiguity.

Iran blinked. Trump flexed. But neither side collapsed.

This was a trial run.

The US gained full-spectrum data on Iranian readiness.

Command latency. Radar activation. Defensive posture.

Iran showed its hand under pressure.
The Pentagon watched every move.
What the US just did was a dry-run ignition protocol to test reflexes.
And it worked.

No bombs dropped. No martyrs made.

But the field was mapped, the pressure applied, and the exit offered.

Trump now controls the pace of escalation.
Iran is buying time through signals and intermediaries.
The Ayatollah is either evacuating or preparing an internal firewall.
Both are collapse moves.

The sanctions, the media leaks, the social media info war - they are not distractions.
They are phase 2 of a psyops-led siege campaign.
Collapse without a missile. Submission through saturation.

This is war by other means.
The strike is no longer the question.
The strike is now leverage.

Collapse has entered the slow spiral.
No fundamental rescue exists inside Iran.
Sanctions are deepening. Capital is fleeing.
Water shortages, blackouts, repression - all accelerating.

The regime is now hostage to its own stagnation.

And everyone at the top of the game knows it.

This was not about killing leaders.

This was about proving who moves the sky.

And now the whole world sees who moves it.

The tempo of collapse has entered American control.

Not by force. By frequency.

The signal has been sent.

Okay. Now this is either a mess of hot garbage posted by some basement-dwelling twitter troll (@SightBringer _The_Prophet_, a U.S.-based account since July 2023 according to X), or it’s a plausible explanation for what happened.

The gulf states did indeed publicly say they didn’t want the U.S. using their airspace to launch against Iran. It’s plausible that Israel expressed concern that the retribution might cause injuries or deaths in its country. All of that can make sense, but to spin up a mission like this, which has been on the table for a while, without these other players on board, just to have them scotch it at the last minute, does seem contrived to me, which is why I think this might be plausible.

But it would take genius level knowledge, like McArthur in Japan, to be able to accurately predict the outcome of “phase 2 of a psyops-led siege campaign.” To go back to that analogy one more time, McArthur used the images and person of the Emperor of Japan to subdue its people, rule like a god in the Emperor’s place, and bring Japan out of the war and into reconstruction. In exchange, Japanese war crimes and war criminals were given a major pass. McArthur knew it would work because he was an expert in the culture.

To know how this threat of military action, all the way up to zero-hour only to be canceled, will affect the Iranian regime requires an equal level of expertise and intelligence. Perhaps the Mossad has it, but I am willing to bet the U.S. does not.

Let’s look at the people the U.S. does have running things: Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio. Forgive me if you attribute superhero level genius to this crowd, but nothing you can say will convince me any of them is capable of “phase 2 of a psyops-led siege campaign” against the stone-cold butchers and despots in Tehran. I might believe John Bolton is capable of coming up with a plan like this, but even he couldn’t get down to the level of detail claimed in the tweet.

Now, it does seem like wealth is fleeing Iran. It seems like those in power are planning and executing their exit. It seems like the banks and other institutions are ready to collapse. It seems like the regime is ripe to fall. But the protests are dying because the protesters are being killed en masse. Does anyone think that if the U.S. simply does nothing, the threat of the application of military force is enough to topple the rulers of Iran?

Or are the Delta operators from Caracas going to show up with their alien (or Cuban) tech and simply take everyone alive to face justice, joining Mr. and Mrs. Maduro at the MDC in New York? We don’t even have charges filed against Ali Khameini and his crew, so I don’t see that happening.

Honestly, I have no idea if we will strike Iran. It seems like we won’t right now, but maybe we will. Maybe the spin-up was a ruse to measure Iran’s operational readiness. But we already knew all that because we bombed them once and took out their radar eyes. The Israelis also have deep operational knowledge of Iran’s capabilities. I am having trouble buying the “dry-run ignition protocol to test reflexes” explanation.

So I’m leaning toward “hot garbage” right now. But if it’s not, then the White House is hiding a genius somewhere. I’d like to see who it is.

One more thing. If we don’t follow through somehow, either by geopolitical pressure, “phase 2 of a psyops-led seige campaign,” or direct military action, and let the brave Iranians fighting for their freedom perish while the ayatollahs continue to reign, after promising to come to their rescue, we are monsters. If the Islamic Republic hates America, imagine how much those who replace it will hate us after we double-crossed and abandoned them so many times. We will deserve every ounce of that hatred.

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